A Year Later: The Dubia Answered?

by Brendan Young
September 21, 2017

The diabolical disorientation prophesied by Our Lady of Fatima continues to plague the Church. The Dubia submitted to Pope Francis on September 19, 2016 by Cardinals Mesiner (RIP July 5, 2017), Caffarra (RIP September 6, 2017), Brandmüller and Burke remain unanswered one year later.

Online sources have wryly commented on the sudden deaths of two of the cardinals, proposing that the two surviving prelates make use of the services of taste-testers. Another commentator wrote that after the developments of the past year (and the lack of a direct and public response on the part of Pope Francis) it may be more reasonable to expect a premature end for Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller than a response. But LifeSiteNews suggests that on the first anniversary of the submission of the Dubia, Francis may very well have answered in his own way.

Two days after the death of Cardinal Caffarra, on September 8, 2017, Pope Francis signed the sixteenth motu proprio of his pontificate, called Summa Familiae Cura. It was released by the Vatican on September 19, the anniversary of the Dubia. By means of the document, Francis destroyed the former Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, whose founding president was Cardinal Caffarra. The Institute existed — among other reasons — for the study and the promotion of family life in the Church and John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio.

Instead, Francis has established the new Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Matrimonial and Family Science. The very name of the new Institute is disturbing and already indicates its orientation. Instead of “Studies,” we now see “Science.” The term ‘science’ implies a kind of superiority of the secular and empirical over the doctrinal and theological. It also evokes the idea that the family can evolve, that it is fluid — and so can man’s understanding of the family evolve.

The motu proprio states that the new Institute “succeeds and substitutes” the old Institute. The new Institute seems destined as the intellectual arm for enforcing the heterodox novelties of Amoris laetitia, teaching perhaps the ‘discernment’ of choices for families subject to “anthropological-cultural change... developments in the human sciences and in anthropological culture, a field so fundamental for the culture of life.” After all, we cannot be limited to black and white objectivity, and the perennial teaching of Christ and His Church. We must accept the evolutionary idea that everything — including the family — is always changing and progressing. We are in 2017, with its own complexities regarding abortion, divorce, homosexuality, marriage etc. People must make the best choice concerning these things, even if it is not the “objective ideal.”

In fact, not only will the new Institute focus “on the new dimensions of the pastoral task and the ecclesial mission” (read: the practical implementation of Amoris laetitia) but it will also “serve the mission of the Universal Church... with regard to issues related to the... care of generation and creation.”

We have every indication from his own words that Pope Francis favors evolutionism and relativism. Indeed, they smack of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, notably cited and praised in the 2015 encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si. In fact, it appears that besides Amoris laetitia, the Institute will be promoting Laudato Si; no doubt with studies of global warming and pollution. We can also reasonably expect it to justify and propagandize the “responsible parenthood” envisioned by Francis, i.e. the Catholic married couple’s limiting the number of their children.

Just as John Paul II’s Pontifical Academy of Life (PAL) was similarly destroyed last November with the appointment of modernist Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia as president, the dismissal of its previous membership, and the subsequent appointment of new members including non-believers and pro-aborts, those previously teaching in the former Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family have been fired, surely not to be invited to have a place in the new Institute.

Throughout his pontificate, Francis has done everything possible — motu proprio, meaning “on his own impulse” — to undermine the Catholic Faith. The new Institute is just the latest example. If this latest affront to the Catholic Faith, let alone insult to his predecessor John Paul II (by no means a traditionalist) is not an answer, albeit a technically-indirect one, to the Dubia, then what is?